Baker Street Recollections: Of Questionable Sanity
by Curreeus
Summary: A heap of one-shots of mine that can't really come under any other title other than absolute crack or insanity. XD


**Summary:**** Watson feels like an insomniac and Holmes "helps out" in his own little way...by taking him on a freestyle flight through London. XD Inspired by 'Fireflies' by Owl City, but not a songfic, and is what you could call cracky – turned half-serious... hehe. **

**Warnings:**** Bed sharing committed by both Holmes and Watson. :D Features both in an established relationship, but that's not the focus here, so not really a slash fic. Plus some exposure to the strange workings of my mind when I become bored. :D**

**A/N:**** This is basically like ****Barbossa's Monkey****'s idea of throwing all the one-shots and short stories that have no point into one big collaboration. I thought it was a good idea, so I did one of my own. :D At the moment it will just have insane, cracky one-shots I've done in it. This one does include Holmes and Watson going for a night-time fly around London. That's right. A fly. As in Peter Pan style. XD Probably more of my blathering and futile efforts to explain myself at the end. Read on, if you aren't freaked out! :D**

**Fireflies**

Watson stared at the wall from his sideways position on the bed, as if daring it to tell him something; anything at all. It was late – that much he could tell, and he wished sleep would come and embrace him in the arms of Morpheus like it so infuriatingly had already done for Holmes. The detective was lying on his side, facing away from Watson, emitting little snuffly snores. Normally he would have found that comforting, but now it seemed to be keeping him awake.

Sighing, he sat up gently and swung his legs slowly out from under the covers and over the side of the bed, his toes brushing the floor. Moving slowly, he stood up, so as to not wake Holmes.

_Now that I highly doubt,_ he thought to himself, taking in the form of the detective, which was still, save for the rise and fall of his gentle breathing.

Watson padded quietly over to the window, staring out of it at an angle parallel to the street, and observed the flickering streetlights. It was odd, the way they looked like so many fireflies... strange little glowing insects he'd only ever heard about.

The moon, although not full, was unusually bright, and as Watson turned back to the bedside table for his pocket watch, curious as to what time it actually was, he realised that Holmes' form on the bed wasn't emitting snuffly snores any more.

Instead, the man in question was sitting cross-legged on the bed, observing Watson with a searching expression. His hands were on the bed and were tapping the mattress rhythmically.

"I thought your insomniac days were over, Watson?"  
Watson sighed. "I believed so too, Holmes. But apparently not."

"Hmm…" hummed the detective distractedly. "So what are you doing, then?"

"Nothing really…just observing the street…"

"And how the lamps look strangely like fireflies? Yes, I've wondered that before."

Watson's eyes widened – he hadn't thought Holmes was able to imagine such things with his rational mind, but apparently he was. Holmes' eyes slid off Watson and glanced around him to the window, a smile finding its way to his features.

"Speak of the devil," he said as Watson turned to observe about half a dozen fireflies fluttering about the window sill. Watson frowned. He'd never seen fireflies about Baker Street before; they weren't overly common. And they certainly hadn't been there a moment ago.

Curiously, Watson walked over to them, experimentally reaching his hand out into their midst to watch them circle his digits and palm slowly, is if it were their anchor. He smiled as they alighted on his arm and hand, their wings ticklish, their glowing bodies casting strange shadows on the minute hairs that coated his skin.

Holmes walked up behind him, circling his arms about Watson's waist, watching the mesmerising insects crawl on his friends arm.

"Mind if I try something?" he asked slowly, watching for Watson's reaction.

"Feel free…" Watson replied distractedly. Holmes took one of his arms off of Watson's waist and slid the hand down the arm with the fireflies on it. Disturbed by the new presence, the insects took flight again, quickly this time, circling first Holmes' head, then Watson's as they sped into the inner recesses of the room, all seven or so strangely synchronised so that they flew at almost exactly the same time.

"Holmes," Said Watson, suddenly feeling light-headed and…well… light all over really… as he watched the insects skim over the bed, then speed up towards the ceiling and begin circling the room.

"Yes, Watson?" Replied Holmes, looking as dreamy-eyed as Watson assumed he himself looked.

"Do you feel…different?"

"Somewhat…" The fireflies, after completing their circuit of the room, still strangely in synchronisation with each other, scattered, and then flew back towards the two men, brushing past their faces before soaring out the window and disappearing from sight.

Holmes was still smiling absently, his expression dreamy, before his eyes cleared and he strode to the window, looking for something. After a few moments of contemplation, he walked purposefully over to Watson, grasped his hand firmly and led him to the window. Clambering up on the sill, the hair that stuck up from his head brushing the top of the window, dangerously close to the two-storey drop to the street below, he kept his grasp of Watson's hand, but turned to him, as if asking a query.

"Holmes," said Watson, concerned about what he was about to do. Holmes just smiled as he took in Watson's apprehensive expression.

"Watson, do you trust me?" It was an odd question, and unsure of what context it was in, Watson nodded slowly. "Yes, but…"

"Good," Holmes interrupted, creeping half an inch closer to the edge of the window sill. "Then you can trust me utterly when I do this."

Watson barely had time to inquire as to what 'this' was before Holmes flung himself out of the window, his firm grip of Watson's hand dragging him out behind him as he plummeted to the street.

A harsh yell tore past Watson's throat. His thoughts came, treacherously - _If I'd known he was going to KILL me I'd never have said anything…_

His eyes screwed themselves shut, and he tensed, waiting for the impact of the cobble stoned street before he felt his descent slow.

_What?_

Slowly, hesitantly, he opened his eyes, to see that they were no longer falling – Holmes was pulling him horizontally along the street – and no part of their bodies had any contact with the ground.

They were flying.

"Surely you jest," He said incredulously, laughing as Holmes pulled him up as if he were weightless, soaring effortlessly to clear the rooftops with clothes flapping in the wind.

Steadily gaining altitude, Watson looked down at the city that was rapidly falling away, the lights like candles spread out on a floor, glimmering intriguingly.

"Holmes, what exactly has happened?" Watson questioned, looking up at his partners face, observing the blissful expression on the countenance in question as they continued their ascent.

"I'm not entirely sure… but I'd enjoy it whilst it lasts, hmm? A phenomenon like this doesn't happen regularly."  
Watson couldn't argue with that.

Soon after that Holmes levelled out, flying several hundred feet above London, and Watson took incentive and changed his contact with Holmes, using the wind pushing against them and his own strange sense of weightlessness that hadn't disappeared to move. He shifted from holding Holmes' hand to sitting on his back, his legs dangling by Holmes' waist as if he were a small child 'riding' him. Holmes put up no resistance to Watson's movements, instead just gripping his ankles with his hands.

"Watson?" Said Holmes, turning his head. "You might want to hold on tight."  
Watson did not question him, instead just buried his hands in fistfuls of Holmes' loose fitting shirt and clung on for dear life as they once again fell out of the sky, Watson pushed back up

into the never ending abyss and away from Holmes by the sudden change in gravity, but holding on due to his firm grip on Holmes shirt and the tight pinch of his calves around his midsection.

Peals of laughter echoed from him as they arrowed down at right-angles to the ground; Watson pulled himself closer to Holmes, using his grip on his shirt for leverage.

"This is incredible!" He yelled to his friend past the wind as Holmes smiled and swooped out of his dive at the last moment, swerving up to avoid the roofs of the buildings of…was it the Strand? They were going inconceivably fast, then! Or, at least intensely faster than the traps and hansoms rattling along the streets below them. It definitely was incredible.

Soaring along, out over the Thames, Watson's hair, short though it was, whipped back over his head and Holmes' comparatively longer unkempt mess was given the same treatment from the cold air over the water. They shot past a tugboat, making its driver jump and stare after them before they swept up around one side of the (still half constructed) Tower Bridge. Looping around the suspension itself, turning upside down, the strange effect made Watson experimentally hug his legs closer to Holmes and hold his arms out as if attempting to grab it. It was the strangest sensation…almost as if his body was trying to momentarily adjust to the new position and his innards were all changing position to compensate. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but felt incredibly strange. It felt comforting, almost, as they returned to the right way up and flew out from under the bridge.

Watson returned his hands to Holmes' shirt as they swerved sharply to the side and out over the rooftops again. The sudden movement nearly threw Watson off, and he gripped tighter as Holmes did an about-turn and started back in the direction they'd come.

Looping around Big Ben's Tower as the clock chimed ten- thirty, Holmes swooped upwards and alighted on the top of the tower, and gripping onto the decorative staff poking out of the top for balance Watson slid off his back as they landed and doing the same, their feet sitting almost vertical on the iconic structure and the pole pretty much the only thing actually holding them in place. The roof under them was shuddering with the chimes of the great bell, and both clung tightly to the pole until it ceased.

"Tomorrow I think I'll find out the significance of fireflies to certain cultures – because I think they have SOMETHING to do with this," Watson stated, smiling like a small boy.

Holmes shrugged, tilting his head to the left, looking down on London. "I can see you're enjoying the viewpoint from my back, Watson, but are you sure you don't want to try it yourself? It is quite liberating."

Watson turned to him, shock evident on his face. "Are you sure I wouldn't simply plummet helplessly to the ground? That wouldn't be my idea of fun."

Holmes shrugged again. "I don't see why you couldn't do it. After all, I wouldn't have thought it possible of myself. And I could always come gallantly to your rescue." He finished with a smile.

Watson bit his lower lip, then, slowly, hesitantly, he let his arms relinquish their grip on the pole and allow his feet to slide down towards the precipice that was the roof of the clock tower, tipping backwards unnervingly. Holmes, almost teasingly, leaped off the tower and simply floated in mid air as if he were swimming, watching Watson's somewhat slow descent. Watson took a deep breath and twisted away from the roof tiles so he was slipping face first, causing his feet to lose what little grip they had left on the edge of the roof and himself to fall off the edge of the rooftop.

His heart jumped in his chest as he began to fall, wind whistling past his ears and his arms thrown up by the air passing him. He leant forward, strangely able to keep his head and not panic, and curved his back up as he had felt Holmes do. Amazingly, he found himself swerving up in a slow arc.

A yell of ecstasy found its way out of his throat as he soared up, whooshing past Holmes and catching him by surprise.

"Just you wait, doctor!" Yelled the smiling detective, racing after Watson to grab at his feet, (which were bare) causing him to lose altitude and slow down, almost crashing into Holmes and causing them both to flail and fall helplessly for a few moments whilst they tried to regain their flight patterns.

The physics made absolutely no sense to Watson nor Holmes – humans had no ability to fly; they had no form of wings, were too heavily boned, were not aerodynamic enough to even get off the ground, should they even gain enough thrust to move through the air, yet there they were, slicing through the air at incredible speeds, looping over each other, and swerving almost too close to pedestrians and cabs on the streets as well as the water traffic on the Thames, frightening quite a few inhabitants of London, one should think.

They were like small boys again, attempting to push each other out of the sky, into the Thames, and into things, knowing they would fail miserably due to the others foresight of their movements, but still making futile attempts anyway.

They both chuckled as Watson made a lunge for Holmes, only to fail and flail off in the wrong direction as the detective grabbed a conveniently positioned chimney stack and slipped around in a circle to hurl himself back in the opposite direction.

They both suppressed yells of mirth as Holmes made to push Watson into another conveniently placed chimney stack, only to have the doctor grab his arms and spin around, throwing the detective off in another direction instead and startle a cab horse – whose owner looked utterly perplexed at the cause of it's distress.

The sky was turning grey before they returned to Baker Street, having realised that two fully grown men would make a bit of a scene if they were flipping about in mid air in broad daylight. Even though they had frightened enough night-traffic of London for the story of tow flying men to be circulating as they spoke.

Holmes led the way through the window they'd left out of, Watson following closely through the still open panes.

Almost as soon as his feet touched the floor again, Watson felt incredibly drained – as if he'd just run four miles - and he collapsed into the bed, asleep as soon as he hit the sheets. His last thought was that perhaps that was where the scientific aspect of this came in.

...

When next Watson opened his eyes, the room was flooded with the weak sunlight of a London morning, Holmes was half on top of him, snoring, and his head was full of strange thoughts of himself and Holmes swooping around London's skyline the previous night.

Dismissing them as some sort of strange dream he'd been having, he shook his head and shifted, waking Holmes up and shedding the covers in the same movement. Holmes grumbled with indignation at 'being awoken at such an inappropriate hour', while Watson went to close the window, which was, for some bizarre reason, ajar, the curtains billowing in a breeze. As Watson looked down the street, observing the street lamps being put out, he jerked at a particularly vivid memory from the night before -

_He padded quietly over to the window, staring out of it at an angle parallel to the street, and observed the flickering streetlights. It was odd, the way they looked like so many fireflies..._

Shaking his head, he turned back to where Holmes was waking up on the bed. Although he didn't remember drinking anything last night, perhaps he start making a habit of not doing so any time before he went to bed. It did give him strange dreams.

Or perhaps Holmes' insanity was finally taking its toll on him – and he was finally becoming as psychologically disturbed as Holmes himself was.

_Well, perhaps not quite, _he thought as he looked at the man in question – who was blinking one sleep-coated eye and then the other in a sporadic pattern, as if he could see the world in different lights by doing so.

_At least I hope not._

FIN

**A/N:**** Alright, I hope that wasn't bizarrely OOC and...just bizarre in itself, although it probably was. I have an odd mind. Please comment and tell me whether you thought I should be in Bedlam or what!**

**Some little things: I've never seen fireflies – I based my descriptions of them on moths. And I don't know if they're common in London or not – I don't live there, and I don't know if Holmes and Watson would have seen them or not either. **

**This is based on the little story that goes through my head whenever I hear this song – not the words. So other than the insomniac bit, that's why there is no reference to the words. Well, I am usually a fantasy writer, what did you expect? :D Something like this was bound to show up at some point.**

**I also spent a while on Google maps looking up the exact positioning of certain places in London. If I got anything wrong, tell me.**

**I think that's everything... if I missed anything, or you just want to tell me what you think, the little review button is right there. ^_^**


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